


Then Spoke the Thunder

by warmommy



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Baking, Cooking, Domestic Bliss, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Recipes, Storm - Freeform, World War II, hooray for metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 13:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy





	Then Spoke the Thunder

_Stir the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Stir in milk, then oil, then egg. Beat for two minutes._

For the most part, the day had been still. It was a charged sort of peaceful, warm, humid, and you kept the windows open to let in whatever cool breeze there was, especially in your freshly-renovated kitchen. It had taken Johnny six months, but it was his gift of thanks to you for waiting so long for him to return. Gleaming cupboards, beautiful tile floors, cabinets painted soft white…

_Add flour by a fourth-cup at a time until the dough forms a mass. On a clean surface dusted with flour, knead fifty turns._

It was one of your favourite places in the world to be. Your kitchen was the very thing that had _finally_ spurred John into going into contracting professionally, creating a business of his own. He now sported blackened fingernails and cuts and bruises semi-permanently, but he was excited, another charged sort of peaceful.

_Shape into a loaf and place the dough into a loaf pan. Cover and let rise in a warm spot until the dough is one inch above the pan. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375._

A burst of cool air kissed your sides, rushing past you as you finished rinsing the dish you had used to mix the dough of Johnny’s favourite bread. You could hear the wind shaking the leaves of the trees outside, bending their limbs, causing them to creak. All of a sudden, the pressure was low. Finally, some rainfall soon. It would be so nice, wash away the yellow pollen that clung to everything, wake up all the things that had yet to stir for spring. Rain meant something new, rain would bring the flowers, a bit of rain would cool Johnny off as he worked out in the lawn, as he did most Sundays. You smiled. He was probably loving the drop in temperature.

What would he like to eat? Johnny never voiced any preferences and tore into everything you made now as he had when he’d first gotten home, just the same, but…he was so special to you, did so very much for you. Cooking was your favourite language, and making any food at all was an art. Your culinary sonnets were a savoury means of communicating how his heart made yours stretch with hope and longing.

What was good for rainy weather? Dark clouds had rolled in from beyond the treeline and soon they would let loose the dogs of war. You remembered, suddenly, the beef chuck chilling in the refrigerator. Beef stew! Yes, that was perfect, and he seemed to genuinely love your recipe–quickly, you checked to see if the bread dough had risen enough, and, seeing that it hadn’t, went to the front door and slipped on a pair of shoes. You would be needing a few sprigs of fresh thyme from your tiny herb garden. With a smile, you let the screen door close behind you. The garden was another gift, for there was nothing that man couldn’t do, nor anything he would not do for you.

When you caught a glimpse of him far on the other side of the lawn, near the shed, your heart quickened within your chest. It always had. He was fiddling with something, and you could only just make out the steady stream of curses by their fricatives and fluctuations in pitch. Other wives would have scolded their husbands, but it only made you smile. You plucked a few sprigs of your chosen herbs, stole another glance of your beloved. Time to go and make something delicious; he would be ravenous when he came indoors.

_Dice the beef. Toss in a bowl of flour until evenly coated. Heat olive oil in a pan and wait until it heats before adding the beef. As it cooks, peel and finely chop the garlic, then peel the shallots and halve most of them, keeping a few whole. Peel and chop the carrots and potatoes into one inch rounds._

Your beautiful kitchen was alive with the rich scents of chopped vegetables, searing beef, and rising dough. For a few moments, it was as good as travelling back in time, standing in your grandmother’s kitchen. You had watched her do all of the things you were doing now, had learned the steps that way. One day, when you and Johnny were quite on in the years, you, too, would have a precious grandchild standing on a chair pulled up to the cupboard, learning how to properly wash vegetables, how to dry their own herbs, how to dice tomatoes and onions for large batches of homemade sauces to preserve for later.

_Add another splash of olive oil inside the pan. Pull the leaves from the thyme and add them along with the vegetables, cooking until softened. Add the cooked beef as well as the red wine and tomatoes. Let the liquid absorb, then add in beef stock, bay leaves, and Worcestershire sauce. Season well, then transfer to the oven for three hours._

You looked out the living room window, but didn’t see him. Probably in the shed. You sat down on the couch with a glass of water because he would positively lose his mind if he knew how much time you had just spent on your feet. You felt another smile and a warm spot in your chest as you took a sip of the cool water. Johnny’s whole countenance had transformed completely when you told him he was going to be a father. It was early yet, too early to tell anyone else, but he had begun to build furniture, started preparing in the ways a new father did. His favourite method, by far, was disallowing anything he felt was too strenuous or tiring. Many times, he had spoken of getting his sister to come help out a few times a week, and many times you had feared that might actually happen. You didn’t have the heart to tell him that would be the most strenuous and tiring thing that could possibly happen.

Johnny kept speculating that the baby would arrive on Christmas Day. He got a little sparkle in his eyes and carried away a bit when he spoke about it, but you never felt compelled to tell him otherwise. Why not let him have these dreams? He was a grown man, he knew babies came when they came. For a long, long time, he had been so alone and so unhappy. John wasn’t much for talking, but that always came across in his letters home. This was the family he had been so eager to start. You, him, and his magic bean.

The dream you had when you nodded off took you back to the moment you’d first met him. Oh, you couldn’t stand him then, but so quickly that all changed, and so quickly it became apparent those smart-ass remarks were always going to make you feel charmed and fuzzy, that those perpetually-rolling eyes were the ones you wanted to wake up to every morning. For you, those rough edges were smoothed. You were the one that got the real grins, the ones that made your knees wobble. In your dream, he never left. You never watched his train depart with tears in your eyes. Johnny had stayed, and you’d never felt lonely or afraid as the war unfolded. There was an ethereal quality to it all, even for a dream, like seeing a firefly’s glow inside a jar, floating alone.

You inhaled and stretched along the couch cushions as that glow faded and you were brought back to the earth by the irritating trill of your kitchen timer. The beginnings of a headache swirled in a dull circuit behind your eyes. You left the comfortable, plush cushions behind to rejoin the waking world in your kitchen, twisting that damn timer until the buzzing stopped.

_After one hour, remove the dish from the oven. Add more wine and sauce as needed. Check to see that the beef is becoming tender, and that the vegetables are not overcooked. Sprinkle a little salt on top and put it back to finish cooking._

You washed your hands and turned your attention back to your dough. It had risen perfectly, so you punched it down, kneaded it a few more times. Allowing it to rise again would create a finer texture, and there was probably enough time to let it rise a third time. Just as you carefully covered the bowl again, you saw lightning from the window above the sink, followed by a whisper of thunder coming from the north. The wind was whipping through the leaves again, and soon the rain would fall.

Curiously enough, Johnny had not heeded any of these meteorological phenomena. If he had come inside when you drifted to sleep, he would have come to sit down beside you on the couch and read the newspaper. He was a man of routine, of habits. You looked to the clock above the stove. Even without the change in weather, he would have ordinarily come inside by now.

Shoes on again, wrapped in a soft jumper to guard against the cool gusts of wind, you stood out on the porch. Turning your head this way and that, you couldn’t see him. You attempted to call his name, but the wind was getting louder and louder, lifting the sound, smothering it, but not allowing for it to carry very far. The thunder rolled in with darker clouds and you set foot on the trimmed grass to go and look for him. The peculiarity of the circumstances and impending downpour made your steps shorter, quicker.

The door to the shed was open. Johnny had built it himself, after he’d finished the kitchen, to replace the tiny shack of one that had stood on the edge of the property when you bought it. He had wired it with electricity, truly surprising you every step of the way with his own capabilities, and you could see light pouring out onto a law cast in shadow from the trees above.

“John?” You held the jumper tighter to yourself as the wind tousled your hair.

The smell of freshly-cut grass and ozone permeated your senses as you neared the outbuilding. You could see him, alone in a chair on the poured concrete floor, leaning forward with his elbows against his knees. He wasn’t looking at you, or anything else, for that matter. For all that you could perceive yourself, he was staring into the thunder that curled its way around your ankles, reverberating from the ground.

It was unlike him. It was unlike anything you had ever seen him do, unlike anything you had ever known to expect from him, and it was the only time you had ever known a man sitting in his shed to be a fright.

“John,” you waved your hand about in between you, trying to get his attention. “We ought to go inside now.”

He blinked as if noticing you for the first time, and you thought perhaps that was the case. “Baby, what’re you doing out here in this weather?”

“I came to find you,” you said. “Didn’t you hear me just now?”

He didn’t hesitate, just shook his head. There was a difference in how he was looking at you now than how he normally would, and no way to account for the spaces in between the two. His posture had turned rigid with impatience. “No, I didn’t. Go in, I’ll be right after.”

Although you wanted to listen, it was as if your shoes had become bonded to the floor. There was a sense of alarm, something very wrong, growing inside your chest. “Let me wait for you.”

“Y/N, it’s about to start pissing rain.” He nodded at a point in space behind you, indicating your house.

“Well, all the more reason for you to come inside, too.”

“Goddamn it, what’d I say?” he snapped. His brows were slanted, his eyes slightly narrowed, something of a grimace overtaking his features.

“Fine,” you whispered loudly, turning around and walking back quickly. He hadn’t _yelled_ , it was stupid to cry, but it was so unexpected, and you’d anticipated such a nice evening, had only wanted to make sure he was okay…

“Baby, wait,” Johnny called out from behind you. The rain fell hard, striking your cheek, stinging your skin. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”

You kept walking to get out of the rain. You were sopping by the time you opened the front door, Johnny following close behind.

“Hey, come here, please,” he said, hugging you just as soon as the door was shut. He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, I’m so damn sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you and I wasn’t mad at you. It wasn’t you, it was all me. I fu– I screwed up. Be pissed at me, you should be, but don’t think for one second it had anything to do with you. Thanks for coming to see about me, and for whatever smells like heaven.”

“What was it?” you asked quietly. Johnny was rough around the edges, sure, but you’d never really been on the receiving end of his ire before. When he made The Face, you felt your lips purse. “What was it? I’m not asking for your war memoirs, John, I just want to know what had you so wound up you lost track of time, didn’t see me or hear me talking to you, and then snapped at me like, I don’t know, I imagine only Sergeant Martin could do.”

“I dunno,” he said, running his hand through his hair, curled by the rain. “I dunno, I really don’t, it wasn’t any one thing. It was everything. It didn’t feel like I was at home. It’s not gonna make sense no matter what I say, Y/N. You weren’t there.”

“It’s not exactly helpful that you throw that in my face,” you said. You didn’t _snap_ , you only _said_.

Johnny frowned at you. “Throw it in your face? I’m glad you weren’t there. I’d rather be dead than have you know a single minute of _any_ of it. That’s not the life you’re supposed to have. I’m not throwing it in your face, it’d have to be a good thing for me to do that, or something bad you did by not being there, and neither is true.”

“It doesn’t help me understand,” you persisted.

“You’re not _supposed_ to, that’s my whole point.” Johnny shook his head. “Don’t try, please. I don’t want you to understand. I get why you want to, but it’s not worth it. Please.”

“Okay,” you said after a moment, because that was all that you could. “I’m going to change out of these wet things. You should take a shower. Put your clothes–”

“In the hamper,” he said. “You trained me well.”

You didn’t laugh. You did as you said you would, changed into something dry while he showered, and went back to the kitchen feeling rather disconnected and sombre. This heaviness did not belong on you, it did not belong in your home. It didn’t belong on Johnny.

The timer went off again. You placed the loaf pan inside the oven with the stew after checking on it for a final time. You wound the timer up to another thirty minutes and sat down at the table. When Johnny joined you, he said little, just picked up the newspaper and read it as he normally would. The rain grew heavier, then began to pass. The timer chimed, your headache fully formed now, and Johnny insisted on pulling the heavy, hot pans from the oven.

He started talking, then, about how the food smelled, tried making small-talk that you had a hard time getting into. When he started telling a story about Red, the lovable and idiotic seventeen year old kid he’d hired to help haul lumber for bigger jobs, the mood in the room began to lighten significantly, and soon you were laughing. Plates on the table, you sat down across from each other.

Johnny commented again on the smell of the bread and had just picked up the knife to slice it. The utensil fell from his hand, clattering down to the dish, and just as suddenly as he had been fine, he no longer was.

“John?” You put your hand on top of his, but pulled it away. “I’ll slice some bread for you, honey.”

“Sometimes I realise I’m not good enough for any of this,” he said flatly.

“That’s not true.” You shook your head. “You’re a good man, you were a good soldier–”

“I did everything I was told to do and I was good at it, and I lost people, but I kept a lot of them alive, too. That’s the thing, though. It feels like it doesn’t matter if it was all for good. Sometimes I don’t know whether it was or if they just told us that.” John breathed a little harder, like he’d jogged back from the mailbox. “Even if it was all for good, I still did it, and that kind of person, what all that happened, nobody that did all that deserves a nice house, a beautiful wife that _loves_ you, a baby, none of that. I feel like I’m living a life somebody else was meant to have.”

You listened carefully, but again shook your head. “It isn’t like that, Johnny. I know you didn’t go to Europe to pick roses. I would’ve at least gotten some of them, if you had. I don’t pretend to understand what went on and I’m not begging you to spill your deepest, darkest secrets. I know it’s probably mostly stuff I’m better off not knowing. I just wish I knew how to help you better when things are bad.”

"I swear to god, Y/N, sometimes I feel like I stepped into the life of another man and you just haven’t realised it yet. It’s fucking nuts, it’s crazy as hell, I know, and I hate it, I hate sounding like a lunatic and I sure as hell hate giving you any idea of what happened over there, but when I shouted and you looked at me like you did, that was still the most shameful thing I ever did in my life.” Johnny looked down and gestured at the table. “What’d I ever do to deserve you and all this? I’m sorry, baby.”

“It hurt my feelings,” you admitted finally. “But it’ll be okay. I love you and it’s okay because I love you and you apologised. You can’t apologise for the whole world going to war and you shouldn’t feel like you have to do that. You deserve it all because you’re Johnny Martin and you’ve worked hard for it. You’re a good man, and you were a good soldier. You’re a good husband and you’re going to be a good father. The best father. If I didn’t think so, I’d just shoot you.”

That finally got something of a smile out of him. He unclenched his hands, but reached for yours rather than the bread knife. “Mrs outranks sergeant, y'know. That’s why I always do everything you tell me.”

“I love you,” you said. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Johnny laughed with an affectionate roll of his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I love you, too. And don’t think I don’t know you weren’t on your feet too much today, I’m just letting it slide because…”

“I outrank you.”

“Yeah.” Johnny nodded and finally started cutting the bread. “Because I’m outranked.”


End file.
